Event

Welcome to the 8th Annual Mod of the Year Awards - the premiere event that celebrates the best creations within the modding and indie gaming scene. Developers have delivered plenty of great gameplay experiences this year, and now it is our turn as gamers to nominate and recognize the best of 2009.

From now until Feb 20th, we shall be sharing a year in review and showcasing the editors' picks of 2009, culminating in the announcement of this year's best mod and game as voted by you. The top mods and games will win the honors of being placedalongsideotherprojects that have gone on to become commercial successes and cement their place in ModDB's hall of fame. And to the winner goes the spoils; ModDB has teamed up with a whole lineup of sponsors that have provided prizes ranging from software to servers to beanbags. Everything to help budding developers excel at their craft.

2009 had many inspiring and graphically stunning releases throughout the year. To be nominated for an award in Best Original Art Direction, a fresh and unique look was key. High-res textures and detailed models while great, was not our focus, instead this award is all about artistic originality. Here are the ModDB editor's top selection of 2009.

Out of Hell
is a singleplayer horror experience for UT2004! Make your way through a decimated town overrun by blood-thirsty zombies! Powerful firearms and brutal melee weapons are at your disposal as you cut and cleave through over 20 grimy and blood-soaked maps!

A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
is loosely based on the sport of base-jumping. In the game, you gain points by swooping within an eyelash of buildings, scoring extra points by kissing the surface, all while going as fast as you can! You can score extra points giving a thumbs-up to spectators as you fall past them or be a rebel and gain points by flipping them off at just the right moment.

NEOTOKYO°
is a first person shooter that aims to provide a visceral & realistic combat experience in a rich futuristic setting. NEOTOKYO° takes place in and around a fictionalized Tokyo approximately 30 years in the future. Mankind has begun to fuse with technology. Government and corporate corruption have transformed Tokyo into a deadly dystopian nightmare.

The Ball
offers an adventure that puts you in the boots of an explorer who gets stuck in a cavern and bumps onto ancient Meso-American tombs. While making your way through the internal workings of ancient ziggurats, golden cities, and huge caverns, your only companion is a mysterious big gold and metal-shelled ball.

Zeno Clash
is an action fighting game set in a punk fantasy world. The game blends the first person genre with the fighting game genre and the combat is generally up close and brutal. The original visuals, which make full use of the Source engine features, are a refreshing deviation from traditional fantasy games.

aaaaaa has a too boring gameplay and monoton grafic elements
neotokyo is really nice, i really loved the environment
out of hell has the greatest textures ever, great work with this outdated engine
ball is nice, but only in the u3 category as msu has proved
zeno has nothing to do with art at this point, the direction is good, but needs a lot more detail to feel like a real world

i respect all these games, all of them got some special thing but neotokyo is simply better then all of them.

Mod of the Year 2009 Editors Choice - this is the name of the so-called competition, there is the Mod of the Year 2009 Editors Choice - Best Indie if you didn't notice, and the catagory says "Best Original Art Direction" without saying Mod or TC.

Last year sure showed me what player's choice really ment!
I know now not to expect too much out of that, last year's editor's choice awards were great though and I'm expecting this year to be no different! The video's were all great to watch last year, hope the quality is still there :D

When looking at actual "original" art style I'd say Zeno Clash wins, with The Ball a high possibility to.

Overal quality of art I'd say anyone has a chance to win but A reckless disregared for gravity, it had sweet gameplay, the art style is interesting and even without top notch graphics looks great at a glance and that's mostly what you see when falling down, but I don't ought the chance very high that it will win, Zeno Clash and The Ball just seem to have a much more interesting style, especially Zeno Clash has a crazy and good looking art style.

Out of the 5 I never played Out of Hell so I can't judge that one, from superficial glances it seems like another zombie shooter, but the reactions from people seem to indicate it's more than that.

And yes, 2 of the mods are Source, 2 of them are UT and 1 of them is an indie. Your point is? Last year a Battlefield 2 mod won at two different categories, the way I see it, they're not biased at all, but I could be wrong, feel free to show me mods on other engines with original art directions.

2 of them are indie, one with the source engine (Zeno clash) and I don't know the one Aaaahaaa (or however :P) used for his game. As for the others, 1 source mod, one ut2004 mod and an other ut3 mod. Yeah, quite some variety.

Are you serious? I mean, Out of Hell it looks great but still, it's art direction is far from unique. Killing Floor is also set in a simmilar enviroment and whatnot. Zeno Clash, looks NOTHING like anything that I have ever seen before, especially on the Source engine. Zeno Clash still wins in my mind.
Will be interesting to see what people on Moddb voted for.

I agree somewhat, but I haven't played Out of Hell so I can't judge that all that fairly.

However I think Best Original Art direction could be interpreted as the best art with an original direction, so maybe they thought Out of Hell had the best(highest quality) art with still an original art direction.

Although not having played it I've no idea what would be original, obviously the most original parts won't be shown in the video's(because that would spoil it!).

Regardless though, it's up to the "editors" on this one, it's what they think, so Out of Hell won fair and square. Already congratulated in a comment above, but here's one again, grats to whoever is behind Out of Hell.

Out of Hell looked great and a lot of hard work went into "CUSTOM" content. I was hoping to see NeoTokyo win this cause i'm a bit biased obviously but also because it was the Art style that made me want to work on the mod. It has the most unique art style IMHO but all great choices.

Its not released and they have not had a significant update this year, that is why they are not on this list, that and the fact the art direction isn't something original either (ie based on an anime).

i dont want to stir anything up.. but saying esf's art direction isnt unique because of the anime is fine.. but then saying out of hell's art direction is so original that it wins over everything else.. is just silly i wish you could actually explain why it is so original, instead of talking about the fact that it looks good for an old engine.. you really didnt say why it was original that it deserved the award ya know..

also please dont take this the wrong way.. i do think the maker of Out of Hell did a great job in terms of making so much art for the game.. its just not original at all.. its all based on things that already exist and composed in a pretty standard way.. anyway! rant over! :) zeno clash was my winnaar!

Thats like saying NeoTokyo shouldn't be in here because it is based on a real place... Original in the sense means that it was created for this game and the direction it took did not change during the entire mod, the atmosphere, the art even the music and story are all fresh and unique. Sorry that I did not explain it well enough for you on the video.

lol... you see neotokyo built upon an already existing design and place.. they didnt just copy paste... and hell i didnt nominate that game.. or even mention it..

o·rig·i·nal
a. Not derived from something else; fresh and unusual
b. Showing a marked departure from previous practice; new: a truly original approach

and when you say original in the sense that it was made for this game? lol every nominee falls under that category... take a look... then you once again say it was fresh and unique? lol! how? what where please explain... i just dont see how you could say that ..
from what you are saying it sounds like this award should be renamed to "**** load of art created for a mod award"

This contest was suppose to be best Art direction, not who can make an old engine look good. Nothing against Out of hell, they did a fantastic job and congrats to them. But when I think of "Original Art" I think something such as the ball or Zeno clash based on a unique style.

I don't get it. Why are they working on the HL2 engine when there's the UT2004 engine? I don't get it. Why are they working on the UT2004 engine when there's the Cry Engine? I don't get it. Why are they working on the Cry Engine when there's the Dunia engine? I don't get it. Why are they working on the Dunia engine when there's the UT3 engine? I don't get it. Why are they working on the UT3 engine when there's the Cry Engine 2? I don't get it. Why are they using the Cry Engine 2 when there's the Cry Engine 3? I don't get it. Why are they waiting for the Cry Engine 3 when new technology will come in a year or so?

Zeno Clash has to win this one, what ever you think about the game in terms of plot, characters and gameplay, it looks superb, that is undeniable. Plus is looks unique, and considering the engine they used... well when I first played the demo I had no clue it was source.